Breasts (28 page)

I
T CAN BE AWKWARD EXPLAINING TO PEOPLE THAT YOU’RE
writing a book about breasts, but this project was met with great enthusiasm by many talented and helpful people. My agent, Molly Friedrich, is, like breasts, a force of nature. Her immediate and unwavering faith, along with that of Lucy Carson, propelled me and kept me afloat. I was lucky that Norton’s Jill Bialosky believed in this project from the beginning. This book was much improved by her editing and insight. I’d also like to thank the hard work of the copyeditor, Mary Babcock, and my publicist, Erin Lovett.

As I wrote this book, I kept pinching myself that I could be so lucky to dive into such a fascinating subject and the rich, varied research surrounding it. It was a privilege to engage with so many brilliant, dogged minds. I can’t list them all here, but I’m full of gratitude to the many people who took uncommon time to spend with a reporter. Numerous scientists and doctors welcomed me into their labs, offices, and conferences and sometimes read portions of the manuscript for accuracy: Olav Oftedal, Malcolm Pike, Irma and Jose Russo, Frank Biro, Larry Kushi, Zena Werb, Dan Sellen, Alan Dixson, Barnaby Dixson, Pepper Schedin, Patricia Hunt, Shelley McGuire, Peter Hartmann, David Newberg, Bruce
German, Patricia Adair Gowaty, Ralph Wynn, Susan Love, Dixie Mills, Bernard Patten, Tom Biggs, and Michael Ciaravino and his patients. A handful of scientists helped me formulate interesting and telling ways to test my breasts, body, and home environment for various chemical substances; I’m grateful to Ruthann Rudel, Julia Brody, Heather Stapleton, Arlene Blum, Sonya Lunder, Andrea Kirk, Åke Bergman, Olaf Paepke, Arnold Schecter, and, at Axys Analytical Services, Barbara Carr. For their generous time and candor with their personal stories, a special thanks to Michael Partain, Pete Devereaux, and Timmie Jean Lindsey. The experts frequently set me straight, but any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

I’m fortunate to have many supportive colleagues and friends who offered wisdom, edits, pep talks, babysitting, and the occasional enlivening Thai taco over the years of this project. Lisa Jones and Hannah Nordhaus were not only elegant role models but also went the extra mile with their red pens. Thanks to Ginny Jordan for inspiration and support, and thanks also to Hanna Rubin, Hillary Rosner, Melanie Warner, Claire Dederer, Tracy Ross, John Heyneman, Sandra Dal Poggetto, Brian Kahn, Caroline Patterson, Michelle Nijhuis, Paolo Bacigalupi, Page Pulver, Carin Chow, Susan Moran, Rachel and Jeff Walker, Deborah Fryer, Bonnie Sue Hitchcock, Curt Pesman, Andrea Banks, Auden Schendler, Anders Halverson, Peter Heller, Dan Baum, Beth Judy, Rebecca Stanfel, Rick Newby, Edward Lewine, Todd Neff, Joe Sorrentino, Sean Markey, Jim Levine, Betsy Tabor, Laura Tabor, Noah Harwood, Metta Gilbert, Lauren Seaton, Barbara McGill, and Danielle Garson. My friends and relatives, despite suffering bouts of neglect, offered sage counsel and various assistance. Thanks especially to Pamela Geismar and Pete Friedrich, Mara Rabin, Ann Vileisis, Margaret Nomentana, John and Galina Williams, Jamie and
Wendy Friar, Terry and Joe Williams, Peter Williams, and Herr Professor Joe Williams Jr., whose scientific genius gives me inspiration and who delivered a much-needed private tutorial in statistics. Penny Williams took the Grandmother Hypothesis to new heights, moving in for weeks at critical times to feed and otherwise nurture us. Thanks also go to the occasional research assistance provided by Breanna Drexler, Jordan Wirfs-Brock, and Keirstin Kuhlman.

I was fortunate to have financial and administrative support for this project from the Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism and the Center for Environmental Journalism. At the University of Colorado, special thanks to Doña Olivier, Tom Yulsman, and Len Ackland. I’m grateful to the Lukas Prize Project Awards committee at Columbia University for honoring this manuscript as a distinguished finalist.

A number of relatives, friends, and friends of friends took me in during reporting trips or offered studio space so I could write: Betsy and Andy Baur, Ann Skartvedt and Mark Burget, Chuck and Molly Slaughter, Terry Hasshold, Philip Higgs, Chris Todd, Michael Kodas and Carolyn Moreau (and Otto, of course), Julie Frieder and Charlie Stanzione, Beth Conover and Ken Snyder, Garrett Finney and Sarah Newbery, Cyane Gresham and Alan Bayersdorfer, Violet Wallach, Jon Hoeber and Jenn Leitzes. I hope to return the favors.

Many fine magazine editors and teachers over the years have taught me much and indulged my curiosity, mammary and otherwise, in ways that supported this project: Ed and Betsy Marston, William Cronon, Fred Strebeigh, John Wargo, William Kittredge, Elizabeth Hightower, Emily Bazelon, Jennifer Rainey Marquez, Megan Liberman, Vera Titunik, Jamie Ryerson, Jonathan Thompson, Amy Linn, Toni Hope, Peter Flax, George Black, Laura Wright Treadway, and Alan Burdick.

Several books stand out as having particularly inspired, influenced, and cowed me: Natalie Angier’s
Woman,
Marilyn Yalom’s
A History of the Breast,
James S. Olson’s
Bathsheba’s Breast,
Siddhartha Mukherjee’s
The Emperor of All Maladies,
Sandra Steingraber’s
Having Faith
and
Living Downstream,
Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie’s
Slow Death by Rubber Duck,
and Linda Nash’s
Inescapable Ecologies.

Above all, love and thanks to my husband, Jamie, who, although he is a leg man, gives me immeasurable support, forbearance, and a steady home port; and to our little hominins, Ben and Annabel, constant reminders of the miracle of life.

they are bigger than ever:
Susan Nethero, aka “the Bra Whisperer,” founder and owner, Intimacy Management Co. LLC, author interview, July 2011.

Its incidence has almost doubled:
Barry A. Miller et al., “Recent Incidence Trends for Breast Cancer in Women and the Relevance of Early Detection,”
CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians,
vol. 43 (1993), pp. 27-41. See also Stephanie E. King et al., “The ‘Epidemic’ of Breast Cancer in the U.S.—Determining the Factors,”
Oncology,
vol. 10, no. 4 (1996), pp. 453-462.

“I would sit in the bathtub”:
Nora Ephron, “A Few Words about Breasts,”
Esquire
(1972), republished in
Crazy Salad: Some Things about Women
(New York: Knopf, 1975), p. 4.

a piece published in the
New York
Times
Magazine:
Florence Williams, “Toxic Breast Milk?”
New York Times Magazine,
January 9, 2005.

Linnaeus could have classified us:
Carolus Linnaeus,
Systema Naturae,
10th ed. (Stockholm: Laurentius Salvius, 1758).

Londa Schiebinger argues:
Londa Schiebinger,
Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), p. 67.

“The primary biological function of breasts”:
Dave Barry, “Men, Get Braced; Wonderbra Coming,”
Aitken Standard
(syndicated column), February 27, 1994. The rest of Barry’s joke is worth repeating: “This was proved in a famous 1978 laboratory experiment wherein a team of leading male psychological researchers at Yale deliberately looked at photographs of breasts every day for two years, at the end of which they concluded that they had failed to take any notes.”

Before advanced organisms produced their own estrogen:
Kenneth Korach at the National Institutes of Health and Michael Baker at the University of California, San Diego, among others, posited this theory. Baker thinks our estrogen receptors retain ancient wiring once used for picking up plant, fungal, or other environmental estrogens (author interview, March 2011). Korach believes these early estrogens were critical for influencing and controlling reproduction (author interview, March 2011).

In times of trouble and stress, it may be these women:
Elizabeth Cashdan, professor of anthropology, University of Utah, author interview, October 2009. Cashdan told me, “I was just sitting in a conference and there’s talk after talk about what men prefer in women’s body types. I got tired of it.” See also Cashdan (n.d.), “Waist-to-Hip Ratio across Cultures: Trade-Offs between Androgen- and Estrogen-Dependent Traits,”
Current Anthropology,
vol. 49, no. 6 (2008), pp. 1099-1107.

“A 41-inch bust and a lot of perseverance”:
Jayne Mansfield, quoted in Raymond Strait,
Here They Are
(New York: SPI Books, 1992), p. 11.

“[Breasts] are a body part”:
Francine Prose, quoted in Sarah Boxer, “As a Gauge of Social Change, Behold: The Breast,”
New York Times,
May 22, 1999.

“This treatment made them smooth”:
Mae West,
Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1959), p. 56.

no other mammal has “breasts” the way we do:
Owen Lovejoy, professor of anthropology, Kent State University, author interview, July 2010; see also R. V. Short, “The Origins of Human Sexuality” (1980), in C. R. Austin and R. V. Short (eds.),
Reproduction in Mammals and Human Sexuality,
2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 1-33.

Barnaby was preparing to publish his study:
Barnaby Dixson et al., “Watching the Hourglass: Eye Tracking Reveals Men’s Appreciation of the Female Form,”
Human Nature,
vol. 21, no. 4 (2010), pp. 355-370.

“Whenever Barny gives seminars on waist-to-hip ratios”:
Scientists like studying both breasts and waist-to-hip ratios (WHRs) because they’re easy to measure. To get a WHR, you divide the size of the waist by the size of the hips. The WHR for Jennifer Lopez is supposedly .67, and for both Marilyn Monroe and Venus de Milo, around .70, so their waists are 70 percent of the size of their hips. Although some anthropologists have claimed the .70 ratio is universally preferred, others point out that body mass index (BMI) is a stronger indicator of both attractiveness and fitness. One study found that women with a .70 WHR and with large breasts have higher circulating levels of estradiol, and therefore might be more fertile (see Grazyna Jasienska et al., “Large Breasts and Narrow Waists Indicate High Reproductive Potential in Women,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society, London,
vol. 271 (2004), pp. 1213-1217). But the study lacks ecological relevance, meaning no one has measured whether these slightly higher hormone levels actually result in more babies being born.

an eighty-pound English bulldog named Huxley:
Thomas Huxley, a biologist and contemporary of Darwin, referred to himself as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his fierce defense of
On the Origin of Species.

Alan’s latest book:
Alan Dixson,
Sexual Selection and the Origins of Human Mating Systems
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

men have relatively small testicles:
Dixson,
Sexual Selection and the Origins of Human Mating Systems,
p.
38.

“there could be a profound preference among men”:
Barnaby is referring to work by Frank Marlowe, “The Nubility Hypothesis,”
Human Nature,
vol. 9, no. 3 (1998), pp. 263-271.

A few years ago in Brittany, France:
Nicolas Gueguen, “Women’s Bust Size and Men’s Courtship Solicitation,”
Body Image,
vol. 4 (2007), pp. 386-390.

In a similar experiment, Miss Elasto-chest tried hitchhiking:
Nicolas Gueguen, “Bust Size and Hitchhiking: A Field Study,”
Perceptual and Motor Skills,
vol. 105, no. 4 (2007), pp. 1294-1298.

Another study showed that waitresses with larger breasts:
Michael Lynn, “Determinants and Consequences of Female Attractiveness and Sexiness: Realistic Tests with Restaurant Waitresses,”
Archives of Sexual Behavior,
vol. 38, no. 5 (2009), pp. 737-745.

In his earlier data from the eye-tracker:
Barnaby Dixson, Gina Grimshaw, Wayne Linklater, and Alan Dixson, “Eye-Tracking of Men’s Preferences for Waist-to-Hip Ratio and Breast Size of Women,”
Archives of Sexual Behavior,
vol. 40, no. 1 (2009), pp. 43-50.

Other studies have shown:
Clellan Ford and Frank Beach,
Patterns of Sexual Behavior
(New York: Harper & Row, 1951), p. 88.

One study found that Western men prefer curvier women:
Terry F. Pettijohn et al., “Playboy Playmate Curves: Changes in Facial and Body Feature Preferences across Social and Economic Conditions,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
vol. 30, no. 9 (2004), pp. 1186-1197.

Barnaby expected men to prefer:
For Barnaby’s papers on male preferences, breast size, and areolar pigment and size, see Barnaby Dixson et al., “Men’s Preferences for Women’s Breast Morphology in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea,”
Archives of Sexual Behavior,
(2010), e-publication ahead of print edition, available at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20862533
; Dixson et al., “Eye Tracking of Men’s Preferences for Female Breast Size and Areola Pigmentation,”
Archives of Sexual Behavior,
vol. 40, no. 1 (2011), pp. 51-58; Dixson et al., “Eye-Tracking of Men’s Preferences for Waist-to-Hip Ratio and Breast Size of Women,”
Archives of Sexual Behavior,
vol. 40, no. 1 (2011), pp. 43-50; Dixson et al., “Watching the Hourglass,”
Human Nature,
vol. 21, no. 4 (2010), pp. 355-370.

Desmond Morris published his famous and influential book:
See Desmond Morris,
The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967); quote from p. 67.

Elaine Morgan, a Welsh writer:
For a lively read, see Elaine Morgan,
The Descent of Woman
(New York: Bantam Books, 1972); quote from p. 5.

breasts helped increase a woman’s fat reserves:
Typically 43.6 percent of the female physique is composed of fat in comparison to 28.4 percent in men, according to J. P. Clarys et al., “Gross Tissue Weights in the Human Body by Cadaver Dissection,”
Human Biology,
vol. 56 (1984), pp. 459-473. Boguslow Pawloski also defends the idea of fat, including breast fat, as being adaptive to the woman. See Pawloski, “Center of Body Mass and the Evolution of Female Body Shape,”
American Journal of Human Biology,
vol. 15, no. 2 (2003), pp. 144-150.

SWAG:
I am indebted to Joseph H. Williams, professor of evolutionary biology, University of Tennessee, and a most outstanding brother-in-law, for this term.

One desert zoologist sees in breasts the camel’s hump:
See Ron Arieli, “Breasts, Buttocks, and the Camel Hump,”
Israel Journal of Zoology,
vol. 50 (2004), pp. 87-91.

“The reasons why the breasts of women”:
Henri de Mondeville, quoted in Marilyn Yalom,
A History of the Breast
(New York: Random House, 1997), p. 211.

In 1840, one physician speculated:
Sir Astley Paston Cooper,
On the Anatomy of the Breast
(London: Longman, Orme, Green, Brown, and Longman’s, 1840), p. 59.

an Israeli researcher posited that fatty breasts:
Arieli, “Breasts, Buttocks, and the Camel Hump.”

“ensures that the nipple is no longer anchored”:
Elaine Morgan,
The Descent of the Child
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 47.

We may be the only mammal:
Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology, Harvard University, author interview, August 2011. I will note that Lieberman warned me away from making too much of the basicranial flexion argument. Just as it is difficult to know when pendulous breasts evolved, it is also difficult to know when speech evolved or how closely speech, neck, and breasts may be related. Point taken.

“They’re pretty, they’re flamboyant”:
Natalie Angier,
Woman: An Intimate Geography
(New York: Random House, 1999), p. 124.

“… from so simple a beginning”:
Charles Darwin,
On the Origin of Species
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1860), p. 460.

The manatee has nipples under her flippers:
The information on mammal features came from various sources, including Olav Oftedal, author interview, March 2010; Alan Dixson, author interview, June 2010; Sandra Steingraber,
Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood
(Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2001), p. 215; and, on the opossum, “With the Wild Things,” at
http://digitalcollections.fiu.edu/wild/transcripts/possums1.htm
(accessed October 2011).

the ability to lactate is among our most valuable genetic assets:
Bruce German, professor of food science and technology, University of California, Davis, author interview, October 2010.

one-sixth the protein found:
On milk fat compositions of various species, see Caroline Pond, “Physiological and Ecological Importance of Energy Storage,” Symposia of the Zoological Society of London,
Physiological Strategies in Lactation,
vol. 51 (1984), pp. 1-29.

The earliest lactating species:
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,
Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2009), p. 39; and M. Peaker, “The Mammary Gland in Mammalian Evolution: A Brief Commentary on Some of the Concepts,”
Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia,
vol. 7, no. 3 (2002), p. 347.

Mammals owned the Cenozoic:
For readable discussions of the ascendance of mammals, see T. S. Kemp,
The Origin and Evolution of Mammals
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); and Donald R. Prothero,
After the Dinosaurs: The Age of Mammals
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

Darwin himself went out on a limb:
Discussed in Charles Darwin,
On the Origin of Species
(New York: Penguin, 2009; first published 1859), pp. 322-323.

we would never have breasts if we didn’t have teeth:
Neil Shubin,
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
(New York: Random House, 2008), p. 78.

even what sex the fetus is in order to fine-tune the composition of the milk:
Katherine Hinde, assistant professor, Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, author interview, December 2010.

The first fluid was a sort of natural Lysol:
There are a number of fascinating journal articles about the origins of the mammary gland and its beginnings as part of the innate immune system. I recommend D. G. Blackburn et al., “The Origins of Lactation and the Evolution of Milk: A Review with New Hypotheses,”
Mammal Review,
vol. 19 (1989), pp. 1-26; D. G. Blackburn, “Evolutionary Origins of the Mammary Gland,”
Mammal Review,
vol. 21 (1991), pp. 81-96; and two Oftedal papers: “The Mammary Gland and Its Origin during Synapsid Evolution,”
Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia,
vol. 7, no. 3 (July 2002), pp. 225-252; and “The Origin of Lactation as a Water Source for Parchment-Shelled Eggs,”
Journal
of
Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia,
vol. 7, no. 3 (July 2002), pp. 253-266.

Lactation, with its tremendous metabolic efficiencies:
Kemp,
Origin and Evolution of Mammals,
p. 113.

“I have heard a good anatomist say”:
Astley Paston Cooper,
On the Anatomy of the Breast
(London: Lea & Blanchard, 1845), p. 6.

Napoleon’s penis:
See Tony Perrottet,
Napoleon’s Privates: 2,500 years of History Unzipped
(New York: HarperCollins, 2008), pp. 20-27; and Charles Hamilton,
Auction Madness: An Uncensored Look behind the Velvet Drapes of the Great Auction Houses
(New York: Everest House, 1981), pp. 54-55.